Author: admin

This is not a pig; the authorities are quite adamant. Pigs are eastern hemisphere animals and javelinas (that’s an initial “h” sound, amigo) or “collared peccaries” are western hemisphere animals, their ancestries having diverged 40 million years ago. But, they sure look like cute little pigs, although the Ranger is very wary of them, having been chased up a tree as a child by a scavenging mob of these very short sighted desert and grassland dwellers from here south to Argentina who keep track of each other with a keen (though not very refined!) sense of smell, thanks to overactive musk glands. We were delighted to eventually spot some ourselves, but alas no photo of our own and no wish to get too close.

A frontier military post, Fort Davis protected freighters, mail coaches and other travelers on the San Antonio- El Paso Road, as well as settlers and villagers against raiding by Comanches and Apaches passing through the area from 1854 to 1891. Few Indians lived in the Trans Pecos, but raiding was part of their lifestyle when they were passing through. The Fort was largely abandoned during the Civil War, but regained its mission in 1867, this time with Buffalo Soldiers comprising infantry and cavalry to conduct the Indian Wars.

At its largest extent in the 1880s the Fort counted 400 soldiers. By 1891 it no longer had a purpose.

They continue to make history at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains (part of the University of Texas at Austin) where there’s more than one way to look into the universe. Even after a visit, we’re not sure of the number, but perhaps eight telescopes, including 3 major ones? It was impressive.

This little 107” beauty (that’s the mirror size) is housed in a room that’s kept at nighttime temperatures to avoid wasting the time needed for thermal adjustment. The principle mirror is so large that the black devices you see on the bottom are there to correct for the deformation of the mirror from gravity as it is maneuvered into different positions. The light, after bouncing around among mirrors, travels down through the arm holding the telescope to a room below to be put through an enormous spectrograph. Although capable of taking awe inspiring photographs, the various telescopes here are focused on spectroscopy through which they provide information about the distance, movement and composition of the phenomena they study. This telescope was also used to bounce a laser off mirrors left on the moon, a laser range finder. From these observations, it was found that the moon is moving away from the earth roughly 1.5” per year and has a bit of a wobble in its rotation. The mirror of the telescope is fused silica and has an incredibly thin layer of aluminum which is cleaned with dry ice and removed and reapplied frequently.

Specially built for spectroscopy, with its 433” mirror, the “HET” doesn’t have a barrel aimed at the sky. Instead, the mirror rests on a sort of bed at a 55 degree angle which is rotated to take in 70% of the nighttime sky. The mirror can be seen in the first photo and is made up of 91 hexagonal components, such as the one in the display, that are made of a material that is thermally neutral. Looking again at the first photo you can see the honeycomb-like surface. That’s the mirror (on which are reflected structural supports). Among the projects the telescope is currently working on are an effort to identify planets in a habitable zone and to look back over 11 billion years to determine if dark energy has been changing.

From exploring outer space to plumbing the deep within – we headed to the Carlsbad Caverns where the bat viewing amphitheater was empty because they were either down in Mexico for the winter or snuggly hibernating (depending on species).

Taking the “Natural Entrance,” rather than the elevators installed in the 1930s, down more than a mile into the cavern provides only the most tame sense of what it must have been like in the 19th century. As it is, the path is very dimly lit, so that it occasionally feels like fellow hikers down into the depths are phantoms in the netherworld. Glowing signage either explains your surroundings or offers assurance of rescue if things go wrong.

What distinguishes Carlsbad is the immense size of the subterranean rooms (the largest of which is the largest in North America) and the way in which they were formed. Due to the presence of petroleum deeper down, hydrogen sulfide rose through the limestone forming sulfuric acid which aggressively eroded the rock, forming enormous voids. The gases then vented up through what is now the Natural Entrance. There are numerous caverns, but only one that can be visited.

Carlsbad Caverns are in the Guadalupe Mountains, but a separate National Park reminds us that there is more to see than a cave.

Before there was the Pony Express, Butterfield Overland Mail had stations 20 miles apart from St. Louis to San Francisco; this Pinery Station is the last remnant anywhere near a major highway and was the station at the highest altitude (5700’). Not much left here, but a good reminder of how difficult communications were not all that long ago (given that Jim’s grandfather delivered mail on horseback back in rural Pennsylvania).

Pretty much contemporary with that grandfather, John T. Smith founded Spring Hill Ranch in 1906 (the family is posing in 1914) because a number of springs would provide essential water.

It was a very nice hike up to the highest of those springs (Smith Spring) where, coming down, we happened on this tiny snowman left for us by a fellow hiker.

and, it’s off to New Mexico . . .

White Sands is an exceedingly rare National Park where you may wander where you want, on trail or off because, as a Ranger agreed, there’s hardly anything to hurt, except yourself. There’s also an exceptional density of warnings focused on hydration and getting lost. With tracks, mostly human, going every which way, it’s difficult to find your way back to your car if you’ve gone any distance and you’re not paying close attention. Trails are quite comforting, as is sledding right at a parking area (sleds are rented and sold in the store).

The White Sands Missile Range (formerly the White Sands Proving Grounds) surrounds the National Park. The Park is frequently closed due to activity at the Missile Range and, indeed, a significant portion of the Park was a “do not stop your vehicle under any circumstances” zone during our visit due to a plane crash some six months prior in the Park.

When the Manhattan Project folks were ready to test the first ever nuclear explosion, this is where it happened, not at Los Alamos. The first use of a nuclear bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, was delivered by Fat Boy. And, bringing us more up to date, that’s a Patriot missile and launcher.

The small base museum is quite a good museum, covering a very wide variety of subjects, but solidly – everything from geology and prehistoric times through settlement and the Indian Wars to the beginnings of the space age. Pictured is how we used to keep track of scheduling before the computer age.

Finally, the grateful sound guy at Lucas Films presented Darth Vader to the Missile Range as a special thanks for being able to record authentic missile sounds for Star Wars, making us wish all of this capacity for destruction were fictional.

For our January visit to Big Bend National Park we flew into El Paso where we managed a snowy hike in the Franklin Mountains and dropped in on family. The bottom portion of the trail was rough going over a long stretch of scree. Returning at the very end of our journey we found ourselves in the middle of a mountain biking race and abandoned the mountain, greatly impressed that most of the riders managed to give us a friendly greeting.

On the way to Big Bend, we confirmed our American citizenship for the well-armed but (also) friendly Border Control people along the highway, noticed that impressive surveillance dirigible tethered due to the weather, and on the way to spending the night in the very un-Alp-like (but boasting a functioning restaurant, albeit in the bar, and wonderful murals throughout town) Alpine, we stopped by Marfa with its movie set vibe, best known for the Hotel Paisano where the 300 cast and crew for Giant all stayed in 1955, including James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson (how many to a room we didn’t ask). With the pedal to the metal numbing distances of Texas highways we were already becoming grateful for the upgrade to our big Volvo SUV when our ordinary rental turned out to have a not so slowly flattening tire while still in El Paso.

The border is where the center of the deepest channel had been in 1848, although the river has gotten a bit more shallow since then and is certainly not much of an obstacle to regular informal commerce (yes, that’s Mexico). It’s difficult to avoid road apples when following the trails close to the river on the east side of the Park in the area of the Park’s Rio Grande Village. There you’ll also find both the occasional seller of crafts and tamales, as well as many unattended displays of crafts with cash boxes. There is, by the way, a legal Border Patrol crossing where tourists cross to have lunch in a nearby village.

Being fans of those old cartoons, it had been one of our objectives to catch a glimpse of a roadrunner. In this, we overachieved. They were plentiful and not too shy, puffing up a bit if unsure of us fellow wanderers, relying on their amazing speed. And, they can fly, roosting in trees at night.

Although we were most drawn to the mountains and the greener areas along the river, we did keep venturing into the desert, as it was everywhere and, as always, a fascinating place. Here at Dugout Wells, where the windmill was essential for bringing up water, we saw the common prickly pear (the Englemann prickly pear) which is, of course, found all over North America, even on Cape Cod. However, the Blind prickly pear is only found in the Chihuahuan Desert and the Purple prickly pear is found only in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts (who knew?).

Working our way to Hot Springs, still on the east side of the Park, we decided to park up where the RVs were required to stay put, rather than plunging down the iffy road, per the advice of fellow tourists just returned from the riverside. Not tempted to walk the road, we followed a seldom used narrow trail leading to a scramble down to a flood plain and found our way to an abandoned motel site from J.O. Langford’s early 1900’s homesteaded stake on a 105 degree thermal spring along the river where you can soak in the ruins of a bath house and admire pictographs on the limestone cliffs.

The only mountain range entirely within a National Park, the Chisos Mountains are largely composed of lava domes formed thirty some million years ago now rising nearly a mile above the desert floor. We stayed inside the Chisos Basin, an encirclement of these domes with a “window” to the outside, seen here on the left from the outside and, on the right, from the inside of the basin, the upper right photo being from a hike further up into the mountain on the Basin Loop Trail.

Our favorite hike was up the Lost Mine Trail in the Chisos Basin, a 1275’ climb in a 4.7 mile round trip (as far as we went on the ridge line). The photos don’t really do justice to the magnificence of the scenery.

Inside the basin the climate is much more lush and colorful than the desert surrounding it, even though most of the plants are the same.

A modest hike at the end of a little road off the Scenic Drive (created by the first Park director through the west side) is the Lower Burro Mesa Pour-off. Quite literally, the top left photo shows a water gouged and smoothed spout that conducts huge torrents of water from the Mesa above to a small canyon that opens to the desert floor. Up in that little canyon is clearly not the place to be when the rain comes on heavy. In the center of the montage is a formation known as Mule Ears. Ruins from ranching days, some partially restored, are throughout the Park.

Crossing Terlingua Creek, we made our way towards Saint Elena Canyon through which the Rio Grande flows beneath 1500’ walls before exiting the Park.

. . . and, there it goes. A fitting adios to Big Bend.

Chile is a country of major earthquakes and great changes, many in recent years, making us question the wisdom of the old saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” We experienced a minor quake during our stay with just a bit of swaying on the 13th floor, although enough to send others in our group rushing down the stairwells. We were surprised that this was a first for our Argentine guide, although it’s in Chile that the toughest standards for construction prevail, for good reason.

The US supported coup led to a very harsh 17 year military dictatorship (with plenty of “disappeared” people) which ended when General Pinochet consented to a plebiscite, and lost. What has followed has been a stable democracy with a vigorous, inflation free economy, the electorate evenly split between those who would be more rightist and those who would be more leftist, none apparently having an appetite for pushing further in either direction. Chile is a more or less pure capitalist country, with no social safety net, currently provoking resentment that the government is providing social support to a very large wave of immigration from the more troubled countries in our hemisphere, primarily Venezuela. Very serious riots and mass demonstrations in 2019 and 2020 were the consequence of the extreme disparities in living conditions generated by such an unforgiving capitalist system, dampened by the pandemic and currently in a state of calm. Indeed, our local guide Ivan, whose family went into exile after the coup when his Air Force officer father resigned his commission in protest, believes the pandemic saved his country from civil war.

Having spent a week here around 1980, Jim recognized nothing except the mountains, as the city has doubled in population in that time (to roughly 7-8 million or 40% of the country’s population) and spread out to those mountains. Gone were the lovely 19th century shopping arcades, everyone out walking with an ice cream cone in the late afternoon, looking forward to dinner at 11, and uzi toting men most everywhere. It’s now a bustling modern city with South America’s tallest skyscraper (in a country where doctors don’t need malpractice insurance, but architects do).

Having barely 48 hours in Santiago and its environs, we were fortunate to be able to visit two exceptional small museums of Latin American antiquities, which had been private collections. We were especially grateful for the chance to see the extraordinary pre-Colombian textiles and feather work, as the Andean region has produced some very unusual and wonderful work. Knotted strings, of course, comprised the written language of the Inca.

Although collected from across America, much was local, such as these Mapuche statues. Per the helpful English language signage: “These remarkable wooden statues were placed on top of tombs in ancient Mapuche cemeteries. They reflect the spirit (am) of those buried there and are intended to assist them in their journey to the afterlife. Chiefs and great warriors were sent to the East after death, to roam among the volcanoes of Kalfumapu, the ‘blue land.’ All others went to the West, to eat bitter potatoes beyond the sea.”

Our last stop in Chile and our adventure into Patagonia was an old winery where roses are planted at the ends of the rows as wary sentinels, like sacrificial canaries watching over the vines.

Then, renewed with a sense of wonder, it was off to the airport for an overnight flight to the other ends of the earth where Christmas in the chill north awaited us.

Before hiking, is simply arriving; and, Torres del Paine National Park is remote by any definition. We were grateful for a steady hand at the wheel for exceptionally long twisting turning journeys on minimally maintained gravel roads pocked with quite impressive potholes. Here, Jorge (also very adept at spotting animals) is enjoying maté, a social habit, typically shared by passing it among friends, each successively draining the cup freshly filled with almost boiling water over a caffeine rich herbal mix. Not getting any takers among the clients, Jorge would share with our Argentine principal guide Georgina and our local guide Nicholas.

Believe it or not, the wonderful blues you’re seeing in the lakes are pretty true, except for in the photo, below, of Nicholas.

Nicholas explaining the fate of a lake with no outlet. Just like the Great Salt Lake or the Dead Sea, the water has become very saline with a high mineral content, leaving crystalline deposits around its shore.

Mummified milodon skin in Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. When first discovered, people assumed it was from a still living animal, rather than one that had been extinct for 10,000 years.

The presence of humans here in southern South America has been documented to about 12,000 years ago. The animals in gray, above, are still around. The largest extinct one is the milodon. The model looming over Amanda is somewhat exaggerated in size and apparently wouldn’t have been able to rear up like that to intimidate us puny hominids.

We’re admittedly suckers for this sort of thing. Both of us in our work lives wouldn’t hesitate to take up the offer of a plant tour, being fascinated with how things work. In the past, we’ve taken advantage of visits to the bridge that turned out to be perfunctory walk throughs, but this was an engaging and informative discussion with the crew (exceeding expectations, as they say).

We did appreciate the news about all the watertight doors to maintain buoyancy during any incident on this Chilean built vessel and understood from experience why we were issued hardhats on entry into the engine room down below.

Without land based accommodations, except when nearby Ushuaia, starting any hike meant first boarding a Zodiac.

It is an impressive operation, without which we’d have been restricted to simply looking at amazing scenery from aboard the ship. The Zodiacs transformed the entire experience.

Meanwhile, back in Tiera del Fuego, there was an abundance of this fungus known by the European settlers as Indian Bread because the groups of native peoples who spent their lives in canoes kept masses of the fungus with them not only as food, but because it is a great source of water. We popped some and found they’re not bad. The canoe dwellers also kept a fire going in their canoes and, like their forest dwelling neighbors, almost always went naked, smearing themselves with fat for some bit of protection from the elements (the climate being more temperate than we supposed). As with the experience of native people almost everywhere, efforts to exterminate them were largely successful.

The vegetation was lush even in what seemed like the most inhospitable locations, what with the thin soil and ferocious winds, even on a gravel plain aside a glacial stream. Venturing into the forest was to be struck by the overwhelming richness of it all. There were numerous species of orchid and, most familiar to us, plentiful lichen thriving only in this abundance of clean fresh air. The one non-native plant shown here is the red sorrel, introduced for who knows what reason, as there’s nothing chooses to eat it, so if it must have a purpose, it’s to add its own touch of beauty.

The wallowing trudge up the 200 steps from the Zodiac landing and back down again had been well worth it as we looked forward to many more Zodiac excursions.